


the signifieds and the signifiers

by akitania (spacehairdresser)



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, exorcists are shitty conversationalists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 23:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11977800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehairdresser/pseuds/akitania
Summary: Reiko meets a stranger, the stranger meets the person she's been looking for.





	the signifieds and the signifiers

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by an anon - Nanase + Reiko, "Things you didn't say at all."
> 
> Contains some rough language.

She’s taken to wearing blouses that button down the front, which feel somehow more alien than the weight of an infant in her arms. What had she worn before, when she wasn’t in uniform? School days feel like they ended centuries ago, even though her old classmates were still finishing their last semester.

Reiko can undo the buttons with one hand with her daughter resting between the crook of her arm and her hip, then shift back to nurse her as easy as she’d buckle a shoe. It’s routine now, and sitting in a clearing with her daughter at her breast isn’t much different from sitting there alone. There’s no one to watch but youkai, and even they have left her alone in the past months. (He must have marked her in some way, given her the scent of the enemy.)

No. There is someone watching her, and someone human at that. She isn’t embarrassed, but she is discomfited, unsure of anything but the prickling sense of observation.

“Are you Natsume Reiko-san?”

She holds her daughter closer, so close she stops suckling and wails. It’s a woman’s voice, or maybe a girl’s. It takes Reiko a minute to see her. She’s leaning against a tree, arms folded, expression unreadable. Her face seems to be swallowed by a pair of round glasses, and her body by boy’s clothes that are probably cast-offs from someone taller and not half so skinny. Dressed so, it’s hard to tell if she’s older than Reiko or younger.

“I am. Are you scared of me?” She smiles to show her teeth. Her daughter is still shrieking, and it occurs to Reiko that her jagged nails are digging into her soft flesh. She loosens her hold just a little.

“I’ve heard of you,” the girl says, taking a step forward. There’s a leaf suck in her curly hair at a ridiculous angle that makes Reiko giggle. Out of the shadows, there is nothing frightening about the strange girl with her strange, pointed face and strange, rough voice.

“Of course you have,” says Reiko, perfectly friendly. “The crazy slut. Are you here to stare at my baby or my tits? Or to see if I got ugly? Or crazier, somehow?”

The girl is turning a vivid red, which makes Reiko laugh harder. “I don’t know about any of that. I don’t are. But I’ve heard you’re strong. You challenge and defeat every youkai you see.”

“Oh,” says Reiko. “No. Not all of them. Who are you?”

The girl takes a few more steps forward, her chin at an awkward, pompous angle. It’s clear now that she’s younger than Reiko, and the flat hollows of her cheeks are still pink. In a very precise voice, she says, “I am a member of a  _rather_  important clan of exorcists.”

Like it meant anything!

“Sure,” says Reiko, “But who are you? And why do you want to talk to me? Most humans don’t. Definitely not  _rather important_  humans.”

Instead of answering, or even rising to the provocation, the girl tilts her chin down as if she were incapable of unfolding her arms to gesture and had to use the tip of her pointy face. “Who’s its father?”

Her baby has stopped crying by now, and returned to nursing. It was impossible to tell, on a little round face like a doll’s, who she resembled. “I can’t say.”

The immediate downward twist of the girl’s mouth makes Reiko cackle. “You don’t  _know_?” She sounds scandalized.

Wouldn’t that be nice. “I know. I just can’t say.” Certainly not to an exorcist, even a dirty, gangly girl in oversized trousers, even one who reminded her just a bit of herself. “Who are you? Actually tell me this time. I know exorcists, I know powerful ones, and none of them are actually that impressive. You’re all just cowards with fancy names.”

The girl huffs out a breath, as if Reiko is the one being difficult. “Well, I can’t say either, then. I was going to offer to help you, but you’d have to help me in return, and you’re not being very—”

“I won’t,” Reiko says cheerfully, and when the girl looks blank, she clarifies, “I won’t help you. And I don’t see how you can help me, if I’m so strong.”

A cloud passes the sun, suddenly, and it’s harder for Reiko to tell what the exorcist’s scowl means. “Fine,” she snaps, sharp and brittle, her low voice pitching up. “Good luck. This isn’t going to be fun for you. Or  _funny_ , if anything isn’t funny to you—”

“What isn’t going to be fun?” Reiko asks. She isn’t afraid. She’s never afraid, only curious.

A hard smile crosses the girl’s face, like she’s pleased to have been given her exit line, and she barely makes a sound as she disappears back among the trees.

* * *

_(“Nanase-san, tell her there’s a place for her and her child with us if she’s willing to accept it. We’ll look out for them.”)_

**Author's Note:**

> Title is half-cribbed from "This Side of the Blue" by Joanna Newsom - the whole line would have been too long, even for me.


End file.
